Repatriate Islamists from Syria face trials in Tatarstan

On Friday, the Prosecutor’s Office of Tatarstan reported that it referred to court a criminal action against one more participant in illegal armed units in Syria. According to the Federal Security Service, the 25-year-old man from Naberezhnye Chelny was fighting there from Nov 2013 till June 2014 as part of several groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

When back to Russia, he was detained and charged with having joined an illegal armed unit in the territory of a foreign state for the purpose contradicting the interests of the Russian Federation (article 208, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

In Nov 2013, the law enforcement agencies of Tatarstan were instructed to prosecute people who had been involved in illegal armed groups in the territories of foreign states. This question has been repeatedly discussed at different levels this year.

As EAD reported earlier, on Dec 11, the Aviastroitelny District Court of Kazan started to hear the case of 27-year-old Raif Mustafin (a local resident, born in Kazakhstan), who was facing a charge of mercenary activities in Syria. On Dec 18, the court found the man guilty and sentenced him to three years and ten months in a general regime penal colony with one-year confinement. Mustafin pleaded non-guilty. In his last plea said that he had nothing to say.